@article {Dudas173211, author = {Gytis Dudas and Luiz Max Carvalho and Andrew Rambaut and Trevor Bedford and Ali M. Somily and Mazin Barry and Sarah S. Al Subaie and Abdulaziz A. BinSaeed and Fahad A. Alzamil and Waleed Zaher and Theeb Al Qahtani and Khaldoon Al Jerian and Scott J.N. McNabb and Imad A. Al-Jahdali and Ahmed M. Alotaibi and Nahid A. Batarfi and Matthew Cotten and Simon J. Watson and Spela Binter and Paul Kellam}, title = {MERS-CoV spillover at the camel-human interface}, elocation-id = {173211}, year = {2017}, doi = {10.1101/173211}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic virus from camels causing significant mortality and morbidity in humans in the Arabian Peninsula. The epidemiology of the virus remains poorly understood, and while case-based and seroepidemiological studies have been employed extensively throughout the epidemic, viral sequence data have not been utilised to their full potential. Here we use existing MERS-CoV sequence data to explore its phylodynamics in two of its known major hosts, humans and camels. We employ structured coalescent models to show that long-term MERS-CoV evolution occurs exclusively in camels, whereas humans act as a transient, and ultimately terminal host. By analysing the distribution of human outbreak cluster sizes and zoonotic introduction times we show that human outbreaks in the Arabian peninsula are driven by seasonally varying zoonotic transfer of viruses from camels. Without heretofore unseen evolution of host tropism, MERS-CoV is unlikely to become endemic in humans.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/20/173211}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/20/173211.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }